Dear Sir,

Knowing the interest you take in every thing connected with “Language,” I beg you to do me the favour to accept a copy of my work on “The Anatomical Seat of Articulate Language”, a subject which I have been investigating for some years.²

I have endeavoured to elucidate this matter by a reference to Physiology and Comparative Anatomy, and you will see that Carl Vogt’s dissections on the ape tend to support the theory of my friend Professor Broca.³ I find, however, so many exceptions to his views, as also to those of Bouillaud⁴ & others, that I am tempted to ask whether there be any cerebral centre for Speech and whether Speech may not be an attribute, the comprehension of which is beyond the limits of our finite minds?

I think many writers have not considered that articulate language is only one form of language. I see in the 2^nd chapter of your 1^st volume, you call attention to the fact that “we might have used our fingers as efficient instruments”⁵   I need not remind you that this much disputed question of the anatomical seat of language—whether a fold of the brain, or any particular portion of the cerebral organ is the seat of the so-called faculty of speech, I say this has an important bearing upon the great question you are so laboriously working out, for if the faculty of speech can be traced to no material centre, does it not offer an objection to the belief that man has been developed from some lower form? Does it not tend to prove that the possession of this “attribute” is one great barrier between man and animals.⁶

Don’t misunderstand me, I am not presuming to call into question your views, but I desire to claim for this subject a share of your attention

I am Dear Sir | Yours truly | F. Bateman

In reference to the language of signs, I should like to call your especial attention to the case I saw in Paris (described at page 111.) where pantomimic language was developed to an extraordinary degree.

C. Darwin Esq^r FRS